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Saturday, March 7, 2009

Now "Israel-lobby" conspiracy theorists like MJ Rosenberg will claim that James "F**K the Jews" Baker was just a shill for the for the Israel lobby, but this find by Mark Hemmingway of NRO is priceless. He sorted through the former Secretary of State's Book, and only twice was Freeman's name mentioned, each time he felt that Chas Freeman was "in the pocket" of the Saudi Government:

Given all this, I thought I would see what former Secretary of State James Baker thought of Freeman. Chas Freeman appears twice in the index of James Baker's book The Politics of Diplomacy. Both passages relate to Freeman's insistence that we go easy on the Saudis in terms of seeking their financial support for the Gulf War.

The first instance appears in a passage in which Baker is recounting his visit to Saudi Arabia in September 1990, to build up support for the coalition to expel Saddam from Kuwait:

From the start, they [the Saudis] were always advocates fro the massive use of force. We knew that if it came to war, permission to launch from Saudi bases would be automatic. And we suspected that the King was also willing to bear any burden asked by his American benefactors. Even so, I was urged by our ambassador, Chas Freeman, to go easy on the numbers. "They're strapped for money," he told me before the meeting. "Don't press for too much right now." I disagreed. (p. 289)

Baker asked for a lot and got what he asked for from the Saudis. The next index entry for Freeman appears in connection with discussions in early January 1991, after the decision to attack Saddam's forces had been made:

Our ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, suggested to me that perhaps we shouldn't ask quite so much of the Saudis. As a result of their previous commitments to Desert Shield, he said, they had a liquidity shortage that Saud hadn't wanted to admit to me. It seemed to me to be a classic case of clientitis from one of our best diplomats. "I'm going in front of the Congress and I'm asking them to go ahead and fund this effort," I said, "and I've got to explain that American blood will be spilled. If you think we're not going to ask the Saudis to pay for this, you've got another thing coming." It was the last I ever heard from him about going easy on the Saudis in terms of the costs of the operation. (p. 373).

I asked a foreign policy expert friend of mine what he makes of the above passages. This was his response:

My own person gloss is that Baker is a class act, and only said "one of our best diplomats" to throw him a bone. The fact that Saudi Arabia is so central to this period — and that the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia appears only twice in the book, shilling for the Saudis both times, and in passages that show Baker flatly disagreed with him, indicates what Baker really thinks of Chas Freeman. "Best diplomat" is just Baker being a great diplomat.

There is another development in "as the Freeman churns" a group of 87 Chinese dissidents sent a letter to President Obama requesting that he reconsider the appointment of Freeman

Dear President Obama:

We are writing to convey our intense dismay at your selection of Charles W. Freeman to be chair of the National Intelligence Council. No American in public life has been more hostile than Mr. Freeman toward the ideals of human rights and democracy in China.

Mr. Freeman has a longstanding record of defending China’s authoritarian regime. In his view, for example, China’s nationwide democracy movement in spring of 1989, which protested government corruption and embraced international norms of human rights, was only the “propaganda” of “dissidents.” That movement ended in the use of tanks and machine guns to massacre hundreds unarmed protesters in Beijing on June 4, 1989,” but Mr. Freeman wrote, as recently as three years ago, that “the Politburo's response to the mob scene at 'Tiananmen' stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership” and that “the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud.”

The prospect of a person with values such as these guiding our nation’s intelligence activity is truly frightening. It is difficult to see how a person with such a strong ideological tilt toward the Chinese Communist Party will be able to provide you with unbiased assessments of the very dynamic interactions among various aggrieved segments of Chinese society and their authoritarian government. But following these trends will be one of the most important tasks of the intelligence community in the coming years.

The June Fourth massacre, which Mr. Freeman so badly misreads, is not just something that happened twenty years ago. It remains a powerful symbol for the ideals of human rights and democracy among large parts of the Chinese populace. It also, quite plainly, has remained powerful in the minds of the Chinese leaders, who for twenty years have banned any mention of the massacre from textbooks and the media in China, and who take great care to detain and “control” any citizen who might want to observe the June 4 anniversary or make “sensitive” statements. “Dissidents” were pre-emptively confined to their homes during the recent visit to Beijing of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

We share your hope, Mr. President, that the United States might regain its moral standing in the world and once again be viewed as a universal beacon for fairness and justice. Your appointment of Charles Freeman could not be more damaging to this hope. Please reconsider.